Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign platform called for relocation of African Americans. Effectively, they would be Americans in the mold of Daniel Webster’s 1820 address at Plymouth Rock. Webster observed that colonization meant the propagation of civilization. He never mentioned the non-whites in America but many felt colonization, “benevolent” colonization was the key to advancing the benighted blacks and Indians among them. They could become more white by separation. Civilized futures awaited!Read more of this post

This post has been sitting around for a while, has something to do with Joseph Smith’s sermons, and in particular funeral sermons, because it poses some questions on the idea of community and eschatology, and I don’t have time to work on it more right now, so here it is.

Mormon communal adventures of the 19th century played out against a range of American civil experimentation. A major difference was the underlying eschatology of Mormonism.

Joseph Smith pushed (via revelations like Doctrine and Covenants 42) the idea of community into the lives of early Mormons, but he also pushed it into the afterlife (an early version of this is D&C 78:6 – later versions were based on sealing). Echoing Swedenborg (by coincidence rather than intent it seems) he infused doctrine with community and family. Read more of this post